May 04, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

TELL BUSH'S STATISTICS TO SHUT UP

In "Peanuts" an exasperated Charlie Brown once told Lucy, "Tell your statistics to shut up." That's the way I feel about the blather you get from George W. Bush and right-wingers. They can take any statistic, shake it up, turn it around, and upside down and make it say something that doesn't fit with reality. We see that with the latest unemployment numbers. We still had a net loss in jobs, the fourth month in a row, but it was less than expected. So that's a good thing! Unemployment statistics are among the most deceptive we get every month because they don't include all the people who have gotten discouraged and aren't actively looking for work. The true unemployment numbers are two to three times the "official" count. This article by Allison Kilkenny is at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/:

I'll let it pass that Dubya's a douche bag, a condescending, spoiled brat who is more preoccupied with preserving D.C. cronyism than protecting American citizens' interests. But what I won't let slide is how he has treated the American people like children when he dressed up a recession in a clown suit and called it a "slow down." In this regard, President Bush and his sterling troop of economists have executed nothing resembling "decisive action." They have spent their time in denial and casting blame everywhere but at their own failed policies. They certainly have done nothing to fix the economy.

Unless, of course, you count forcing a shotgun wedding with JPMorgan and Bear Stearns with $236 million of taxpayer money. Personally, I see that as the rich protecting the wealth, but I've been called paranoid and moody in the past.

But I know when I'm beat, so if protecting rich people is decisive action, then yes, George W. Bush is the most decisive president in the history of the United States. Call him "the Decisiver." Tell him it's a real word. He'll believe you.

FACING THE FACTS

Despite all the screams about the "liberal media," the media in the United States swing very far to the right. They are all owned by big corporations and corporations are more interested in profits than anything else. Right-wingers also put the value of profits and the "free market" above human life and the environment. It should be abundantly clear to all but the most ignorant right-winger that conservative policies and economics don't work. But the media continue to act as if the right wingers have legitimate counterpoints to the reality we on the left acknowledge. The war in Iraq is a lost war. It's a war that should never have been started. It does nothing to deter global terrorism. Global warming is a fact and all the denial in the world will not make it go away. Tax cuts for the rich do not produce prosperity for all. This commentary by Arianna Huffington is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

So that 28 percent of the population that continues to support George W. Bush no matter how many bodies pile up in Iraq, how many jobs disappear overseas, how many For Sale signs go up on their block, or how high gas prices get, continues to dominate our politics.

Let's take them one by one, starting with the media which remains hopelessly addicted to the false belief that in order to be fair and balanced every story needs to be given the "on the one hand... and on the other" treatment. But not every story has two sides -- and the truth is often to be found not in the middle but solidly on one side or the other.

The earth is not flat. Global warming is a fact. Evolution is a fact -- sorry Mike Huckabee. And not even Republicans still believe in the unfettered, free market. Look how they rushed to Big Government to save their beloved Bear Sterns.
Nor are there two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period. Full stop. Yet the same media that enabled the administration to sell us the multi-trillion dollar war are -- nearly six years later -- still pushing the Right's line that "the surge is working." Green Zone bombardments be damned.